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In a wide-ranging report that gave a stinging assessment of the Detroit Police Department and its prior leadership, Police Chief James Craig said Thursday he has plans for sweeping changes aimed at reducing overall crime, speeding response times on high-priority calls and clearing more homicide cases.

The department’s plan of action says Craig, who took over the department in July, and his leadership team intend to win back public trust by improving service and cutting crime.

“I don’t have to tell you, the residents of this city, that there is much in the department that must be repaired, but I want to assure you that we are well on our way to repairing it,” Craig said in a letter accompanying the plan.

While outlining changes and goals, the plan also criticizes previous efforts to restructure the department, saying they were not well conceived and did not get attention or follow-through from top brass to ensure they were successful.

“There have been a variety of plans and restructurings put in place over the past several decades, by a variety of chiefs, as the department lost personnel, as service to the public deteriorated, and as crime remained at unacceptably high levels,” the plan says.

Since taking over the department, Craig has made sweeping changes. He overhauled his administrative staff, eliminated 12-hour shifts and virtual precincts and started using CompStat, a crime statistics reporting system.

This year, the department hopes to reduce overall crime by 10% and have five-minute response times to Priority 1 calls. Other goals include:

■ Hiring 150 new police officers by the end of the second quarter this year.

■ Deploying detectives in each of the 12 precincts by the end of the first quarter.

■ Seeking reimbursement from special event organizers. The department provides support for such events as the North American International Auto Show, the Tigers home opener and the Detroit Free Press/Talmer Bank Marathon.

■ Improving relationships with the community and for the department.

■ Becoming fully compliant with federal consent decrees.

“Together, the command staff and I envision a very different Detroit Police Department, one that serves the public and grapples with the crime that has made life in Detroit so difficult and inherently dangerous,” Craig said in the letter. “We are reforming the policies and practices that have rendered our agency ineffective in past years. We are shoring up and investing in the neglected support services and infrastructure that are essential to modern police work. And we are leading our police officers, tapping into their strong desire, often frustrated in the past, to protect people of this city and to attack crime in all its forms.”

The city saw reductions in crime last year, police have said.

In 2013, Detroit had 333 criminal homicides — down from 386 criminal homicides in 2012, when the city saw its highest homicide rate in nearly two decades. The homicide rate in 2013 was 47.5 homicides per 100,000 residents, compared with 55 homicides per 100,000 residents in 2012.

Last year, the city also saw reductions in nonfatal shootings, aggravated assaults, robberies, sexual assaults, carjackings, burglaries and stolen vehicles, police reported. Craig said the department had a 50% clearance rate for 2013 homicides. The department’s goal for this year is a 70% clearance rate on homicide cases.

While the plan criticizes the poor implementation of prior initiatives, the Rev. Jerome Warfield, who recently resigned from the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners, said prior chiefs made strides when it came to fighting crime and bringing the department into compliance with the consent decrees, which the city entered into with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2003 after police were accused of unconstitutional conduct.

“I think it’s disingenuous to make it look like it only started to get better when the new administration came in,” said Warfield, who said his last board meeting was Thursday.

According to the plan, more than 100 pages long, the consensus across the department is that broad changes are needed. The plan comes when the city is going through bankruptcy.

“The DPD,” it says, “must be refocused and re-energized, and these changes must be swift and decisive to turn the tide against crime and disorder in Detroit.”

Stand-alone precincts

The department is moving to have 12 stand-alone precincts, rather than precincts consolidated into districts and plans to establish Precinct Detective Units in each precinct. Each unit will include a burglary squad; a robbery and assault squad, which will handle nonfatal shootings; and a general assignment squad, police said.

According to the department, sweeping reforms are needed to maximize investigative resources.

“Effective investigations in the DPD have been undercut by a number of past decisions and practices that have made the work of investigators very inefficient,” the plan says.

According to the plan, investigators have said there is little training available; unqualified people have been appointed to investigative posts; there was no formal case management system in place for assigning, closing or gauging progress on cases, and “much investigative work time is consumed by the practice of preparing and enhancing in-custody cases ... leaving little time to investigate out-of-custody or unsolved cases.”

The department also plans to implement an effective case management system, “including required updates from investigators at regular intervals and regular mandatory reviews by supervisors”; establish a new detective rank; and each homicide detective, though working in a centralized unit, has been assigned to focus on a precinct area.

“DPD is faced with the challenge of building an efficient investigative system from the ground up,” the plan says.

The department also plans to improve evidence tracking, as well as its records management system.

“Current data entry is sloppy and crime classification is often inaccurate, resulting in inaccurate reporting to state and federal entities,” the plan says. It adds that FBI Uniform Crime Reports, which collects crime data from municipalities nationwide, for Detroit “may be inaccurate.”

According to the plan, a records and identification unit has been established to review reports filed by officers “to ensure that they are correctly classified for CompStat, state and federal crime reporting.”

Aiming for compliance

The department also is striving to be fully compliant with the two consent decrees. Last month, the city asked that the federal monitor suspend oversight on use of force and witness detention provisions the department has been compliant with for two years.

In a six-page court filing Monday, federal prosecutors urged the court to shift the monitor’s attention to problems that have not yet been fixed at the DPD, noting some issues have already been resolved for two or more years.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office agreed that Detroit police already have fixed many problems and that attention needs to be devoted to areas that still need improvement, noting the city is in compliance with more than 88% of the consent judgment’s requirements.

What needs to be determined now, prosecutors wrote, is “whether the underlying deficiencies that led to entry of the judgment have been resolved.”

To figure that out, they said, the federal government will conduct a review and report on the DPD’s use of force, arrest and witness detention practices. The review, they wrote, will evaluate whether the DPD’s compliance with provisions has resulted in “just, fair and constitutional encounters between police and the citizens of Detroit, and will identify any areas … where further work is needed.”

If the review detects any problems, prosecutors wrote, the government will “promptly alert the city and the monitor.”

U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said Thursday, “Compliance with the requirements of the consent judgments has taken longer than any of us anticipated. However, we think DPD is in the home stretch and is capable of full compliance with all of the requirements.

“When this case is finally over, we think that DPD will be a substantially better department than it was when we started this investigation and that this will make Detroit a safer city for its residents, visitors and police officers.”